Sunday, March 29, 2015

Sometimes you feel like a romance, sometimes you don’t. If you’re looking for a light period piece, At the Water’s Edge should give you a few hours of pleasure. If you love Downton Abbey primarily for its setting and romantic entanglements, this may be the book for you. If, however, you prefer highly developed characters and a complex plot alongside your highlands, scullery maids, and love triangles, At the Water’s Edge won’t be your cup of Earl Gray.

It’s hard to conceive that the same writer who wrote Water for Elephants also penned At the Water’s Edge. The word water seems to be their only similarity. At the Water’s Edge is a frothy World War II romance featuring a gruff war hero, caricatured hardworking Scots, and two American wastrels hiding from their lack of gumption and honesty while accompanied by a naive American girl in Scotland in search of the Loch Ness Monster.

Maddie and Ellis are newlywed American socialites. Maddie travels with Ellis and his best friend Hank to Scotland where they hope to redeem themselves and their fortunes. After a harrowing, wartime sea journey, they arrive in the tiny town of Drumnadrochit in January, 1945, so Ellis and Hank can search for the monster that Ellis’s father had once chased. Upon arriving, Maddie opines:

“To say that I wished I wasn’t there would be a ludicrous understatement, but I’d only ever had the illusion of choice. We have to do this, Hank had said. It’s for Ellis.

To refuse would have been tantamount to betrayal, an act of calculated cruelty. And so, because of my husband’s war with his father and their insane obsession with a mythical monster, we’d crossed the Atlantic at the very same time a real madman, a real monster, was attempting to take over the world for his own reasons of ego and pride.”

Thus begins Gruen’s quest to show that the sins of selfishness and arrogance don't just belong to classical madmen like Hitler. Meanwhile Maddie makes friends among the villagers, abandons her own pride, and learns that everything isn’t as she’d believed. Gruen pens word pictures like that of Maddie watching Ellis lecture her:

“I stared in fascination, watching his tongue undulate behind his teeth. Once, a string of saliva attached itself to his lips and survived the length of a few words before snapping. His nostrils flared beneath his pinched bridge. Deep lines appeared above his eyes, and when he tilted his chin so he could look down his nose at me, I could have sworn I was looking at his mother’s head spliced onto his body, a living, breathing cockentrice that had climbed off its platter and spat the apple out of its mouth so it could yammer at me about how surely even I could see that blurred boundaries not only encouraged the lower classes to be lazy, but threatened the very social structures our lives were built upon.”

Gruen’s language is carefully constructed yet it doesn't seem supported by the predictable storyline and the one-dimensional characters whose actions rarely surprise. Still, if you're looking for a Mother's Day or birthday gift for your mother, aunt, sister, or friend and she loves historical romances with a touch of sex and a guaranteed happy ending, At the Water's Edge will make her day.

Summing it Up: If I were on a long flight to Scotland, this might help me pass the time while filling me with visions of crofts, air raids, love scenes, and happy endings. If, however, you’re looking for historical fiction with more heft, this isn’t it. Just as the tea Maddie sips tastes like boiled twigs, this novel reads like a watered-down version of life during wartime.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

The stories we tell define us. What we enjoy reading typifies us as well. Some of us want books with lots of action. Others prefer subtle mirrors into their own lives. Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread is the latter, a novel about life as most people live it, a book in which going for a walk is an event. Critics are divided on Tyler’s twentieth novel. The Chicago Tribune says it’s “probably the best novel you will read all year.” The New York Times published two reviews – one glowing and one by the irascible Michiko Kakutani who found it predictable. I love it because of its predictability. Tyler’s third person narration that drops me into the Whitshank family while standing back and allowing me to settle into the rhythm of their lives is the kind of predictability I want from a favorite author. In A Spool of Blue Thread, Tyler gives me a new story and new characters while continually allowing me the comfort of knowing she’ll safely guide me through their journey.

This particular journey begins in 1994 with a phone call from Denny, the prodigal son. “A nineteen-year-old boy and we have no idea what part of the planet he’s on. You’ve got to wonder what’s wrong there” says Red, Denny’s perfectionist father. Abby, his mother, is a fixer who notes,

“We have to find him. We should have that whatsit – caller ID.” . . .

“What for? So you could phone him back and he could just let it ring.”

“He wouldn’t do that. He would know it was me. He would answer, if he knew it was me.”

Skipping ahead to 2012, Red’s had a heart attack and Abby is forgetting things.

“She began to go away, somehow, even when she was present. . . . She actually seemed unhappy, which wasn’t like her in the least. She took on a fretful expression, and her hair – gray now and chopped level with her jaw, as thick and bushy as the wig on an old china doll – developed a frazzled look, as if she had just emerged from some distressing misadventure.”

Abby had emerged from a distressing misadventure. When everyone in her family wasn’t happy and present, Abby was distressed and her “mind skips” were making her wonder if she’d be able to fix everything. Each of the four Whitshank children wants to make everything okay too, but in different ways fitting their unique personalities. When Denny returns and, as the prodigal always does, upsets the precarious balance, things shift. As Tyler navigates the Whitshank’s struggles with how to deal with aging parents, she inhabits a place most of us have been or know we’ll soon visit. She hands us a mirror into an ordinary family who “like most families . . . imagined they were special.” The novel delves into Red and Abby’s past and shows us how Red’s deceased father, who built their home, still influences their lives. Tyler uses the house as a metaphor for the constancy of their story and for the impossibility of keeping life from changing.

Anne Tyler is the Dowager Queen of the Ordinary, she’s the quintessence of the quotidian which is ironic because Tyler isn’t one to use words like quintessence and quotidian. Instead, she shows what a slice of normal life feels like. She embeds us in the conventional and the comfortable and once she has us safely sitting on the living room couch, she shows us real life. Most of us won’t ever walk the red carpet, score the winning touchdown, or murder anyone. Anne Tyler writes about us and our lives.

Summing it Up: Read A Spool of Blue Thread to read about your own family, your own life. Read it to understand the people who inhabit your world – the ones who make it easy and the ones who make it tough. Absolutely read it for the sweet, sweet ending that proves that you can go home again.

Rating 5 stars

Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Gourmet, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Book Club

Monday, March 16, 2015

All My Puny Sorrowsis witty, wise, ironic, unsettling, dark, and original. Sisters Elf and Yoli grew up in a small Mennonite community in Manitoba. Elf has become a world-renowned concert pianist and Yoli seems like a screw-up but it’s Elf who wants to kill herself and her latest attempt is destroying Yoli. You’ll fall under the spell of Yoli’s journey to love and support her sister while trying to figure out just what that means. That spell is cast more by voice than by plot. Every character in this novel is a unique personality seen through Yoli’s crisp first person narrative. Yoli and Elf’s family members are quirky, real, and achingly funny. Only a writer like Toews could make a novel with a plot centered on suicide so very, very humorous. It’s droll and clever because the sharply drawn characters like Elf and Yoli and their indomitable mother never stop surprising you.

The novel also illuminates the Mennonite community and the elders who challenge this strange family that refuses to stay inside their proscribed box. When Elf was fifteen Mennonite men entered their house having “heard from a local snitch that Elf had ‘expressed an indiscreet longing to leave the community’ and they were apoplectically suspicious of higher learning – especially for girls. Public enemy number one for these men was a girl with a book.

She’ll get ideas, said one of them to my father in our living room, to which he had no response but to nod in agreement and look longingly toward the kitchen where my mother was staked out snapping her dish towel at houseflies and pounding baby veal into schnitzel. I sat silently beside my father on the itchy davenport absorbing their “perfume of contempt” as my mother described it.”

Even when Toews tosses in a character who only appears briefly her writing soars with sharp descriptions like that of the man who “smashed his head on the dash of his car when it hit a cement truck on black ice and now he stands alone outside the 7-Eleven on Corydon asking people really politely for change. He’s still handsome. He seems sort of hollowed out but his eyes are really bright, the whites really white and the blues really blue, like Greek islands. He mumbles words and sometimes it seems like he’s laughing at everything like he’s just been thrown a surprise party.”

My appreciation for this novel was heightened when I learned that Toews’ father committed suicide and her sister, her only sibling, also killed herself five years ago after several attempts. AMPS, as the sisters shorten Coleridge’s poetic reference to All My Puny Sorrows, is rich and true with insights Toews has gained from living through such difficulties. The book is a scorching portrayal of the mental health system because it makes us care about the characters enough to want them to get the attention they need.

Hockey fans probably know how to pronounce Toews name because of Chicago Blackhawks star Jonathan Toews. (It’s Tāves .) Perhaps All My Puny Sorrows will make Miriam Toews as well known in the U.S. so no one will wonder how to say her name. Reading Giller Prize finalist and winner of the Writer’s Trust of Canada prize All My Puny Sorrows is the perfect introduction to an author who’s revered in Canada and Britain and who deserves much more attention from U.S. readers.

Summing it Up: This searing, autobiographical novel is more fulfilling than anything that ever came out of The Mennonite Treasury Cookbook. Literary readers looking for a distinctive voice with a plaintive, yet wry, tone will carefully digest this tragicomedy. Thankfully, Toews backlist includes five previous novels and a work of nonfiction to sate the hunger that will surely come after digesting the last page of All My Puny Sorrows.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

It’s tough to review a book when you really, really like the author. There’s always a worry that you’ll write about the person instead of the book. Alison DeCamp is a bookseller/conversationalist at one of the independent bookstores I love to visit. She has the dry-like-a-martini-with-no-vermouth sense of humor I love, she detests the same grammatical errors that make me wince, and her reading choices usually mirror mine. My hope upon opening her acclaimed debut, My Near-Death Adventures (99% True), was that it would be just like her and I could write a love letter to the book and to Alison. Thankfully, I didn’t get my wish because DeCamp, a former teacher, has instead written a slapstick comedy for 9-to-12-year-olds that will make even the most reluctant male readers want to devour it just as Stan, the protagonist, devours bacon. And wonder of wonders - since the story’s set in an 1895 lumber camp, it will also allow teachers to assign it or use it as a read-aloud to meet Common Core standards while engaging their classrooms in uproarious laughter.

The book opens with Stan’s nemesis, his Granny Cora, getting his mother to solve their money problems by cooking at a remote Michigan Upper Peninsula lumber camp. Stan soon learns that his “dearly departed” father may have departed but is still alive. Thus, Stan starts writing himself imaginary letters he can receive from said deserter dad. Add in Stan’s scrapbook filled with advertisements and clippings from the 1890s and Stan’s inability to discern whether he keeps his wry comments to himself or inadvertently voices them aloud. Toss in a dash of Stan’s cousin Geri, the girl in the camp who calls Stan out on his antics, and add lots and lots of bacon to nourish the lumberjacks so they can fell immense logs and you have a winner of a story.

I found myself pretending that I was back in the school library where I read to third through fifth graders every week. The boys there loved having me read “something funny” like the classic Ida Early books because her tall tales made them laugh (surely it was my accent) while her stories reminded them of their own families. Stan’s adventures and his own problems as an unreliable narrator are exactly what those boys would love to hear or even to read on their own.

Historical fiction for the middle grades can be a hard sell but the humor and pictures in My Near-Death Adventures will have kids lined up to borrow it in school libraries and then have them guffawing and breaking the silence during silent reading time as they enjoy Stan’s antics. This author’s portrait that young readers attending the book’s launch were encouraged to deface may say more about why kids will enjoy this book more than any of my words.

Even the ever serious Kirkus Reviews calls it: “A knee-slapper of a debut featuring a narrator who is rather less than 99 percent reliable but 100 percent engaging.”

Summing it Up: Read this excerpt to see for yourself why third through fifth graders will eat up Stan and his antics. Put on a flannel shirt, cozy up to the fire, grab a slab of bacon, and imagine yourself in the north woods as you devour this comedic tale.

FYI: You can buy the book from Between the Covers, the bookstore where the author is a part-time employee and have it signed or personalized by calling 231-526-6658. You’ll also find autographed copies at many independent Michigan bookstores that De Camp is visiting this year. She’s also visiting a raft of schools and if you’re a teacher or librarian, you may want to visit her website to arrange a visit too.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II is for book lovers. At the beginning of the war, a Victory Book Campaign committee began soliciting donated books for soldiers. It soon became clear that lightweight, portable books were needed instead of donated hardcover titles and a new idea was launched. The logistical and political problems of providing small, paperback books to troops all over the world were daunting and some opposed the plan, but a consortium of librarians, military personnel, authors, publishers, and printers worked together to make sure men in combat had books to read. The unanticipated results included the resurrection of The Great Gatsby from obscurity, the beginning of the paperback becoming a reading staple, and the creation of a generation of men who loved to read.

The way Manning describes the popularity of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn makes me want to read that wonder of a novel again (for the third or fourth time) just to see it as Manning shows it through servicemen's eyes. Soldiers and sailors wrote Smith to tell her how her words transported them to life back home. One wrote Smith comparing the book to “a good letter from home.” Another wrote: “books are one of our rare pleasures.” Smith estimated that she received about four letters a day from servicemen and she responded to almost all of them. One wrote that “he and his wife planned to have a child when he returned home, and if it was a girl, they would name her Betty Smith.” When Books Went to War is at its best when sharing such vibrant stories of men finding joy in reading.

My favorite part of the book is the thirty-page Appendix B: Armed Service Editions, a chronological listing of all 1200 printed titles. Seeing books like Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling, Lloyd C. Douglas’s The Robe, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Voltaire’s Candide, Ernie Pyle’s Here is Your War, and William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy alongside bodice rippers, poetry, history, science, sports, mysteries, classics, and humor spoke to the care with which the titles were selected. It also made me realize the education these men received while riding on troop ships, sitting in foxholes, and recovering in hospitals.

One thing that sets this book apart from other World War II histories is that it concisely tells the story thus it’s always fresh and engaging. That uncensored titles were being read by men fighting against a regime that burned books is something that everyone should want to know. In the end over 123 million special Armed Service Edition books were distributed and an additional 18 million books were donated to the cause via the Victory Book Campaign thus many more books were given to the men fighting than Hitler had destroyed.

Summing it Up: Read this moving history of getting books to soldiers who needed and cherished them to appreciate the power of words to win the war and to create a peacetime world of value. This is a fast-paced, yet inspiring portrait of a little-known U.S. program that made a difference in so many lives and it's the rare book about war that has a happy ending.

About Me - Trina Hayes

Connecting people with books they'll love is what I do. I lead three book clubs and participate in another. I speak about books to library, university, social and civic groups and I'd love to speak to your gathering. My annual book list of the more than 100 books I read and review every year comes out every November. Find past lists on the pages listed below. Because I'm always hungry for good books, I categorize the books on the lists and on my posts by food groups as explained in the review categories listed below.

Contact me with questions or about hiring me to speak at trinabookhungry@gmail.com or by posting a comment on one of my reviews.